


The Red Line

by SheelaNaGig



Series: The Red Line [1]
Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, coffee and a pervasive sense of carnage, even cold blooded killers have feelings too, i built this ship to wreck, karen really has no luck with men, kastle - Freeform, so much more angst than i anticipated
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-21
Updated: 2016-04-09
Packaged: 2018-05-28 06:19:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 14,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6318070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SheelaNaGig/pseuds/SheelaNaGig
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You'd think it would be easy to avoid someone in a city of eight million people.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. An Unlikely Meeting

**Author's Note:**

> Not sure where I'm going with this but I love this pairing.

The first time she met Frank Castle, she was warned not to cross the red line the detaining officers had taped on the floor around his hospital bed. Well, truth be told, the actual first time she met Frank he blasted several sprays of shotgun fire over her head, but according to him she was “never in any danger.”

And somehow she came to believe him. Not only believe him but champion him when even he himself had given up any hope of ever bringing justice to slain family. There’d been temporary stays in his stoicism but the red line remained. Of course she stepped over the hospital room’s tangible line many times, to cajole him, to comfort him, to capture any talkative ground he surrendered. And maybe she toed that intangible red line Frank bounded around himself. Could she step over that line? Regardless of how many times she tried, it cost her own tithe of vulnerability. A tithe that ended up costing her sleepless nights spent jumping at every creak, her low paying job that had paid in emotional satisfaction, and a few crashed friendships. By all rights, the man was a human disaster walking around in combat boots. Someone to be feared. Someone to be avoided at all the costs she’d already paid. What left had she to lose?

“Stay away,” he had said, his sloe eyes turned from where she’d cowered, focused on the carnage he’d wrought upon the linoleum of a 47th’d street diner floor. As if that was easier to look at. “Just stay away from me.”

Yet _he_ couldn’t seem to stay away from her. Not that that was such a terrible thing given he’d saved her ass when her curiosity landed her in the deep end. If only he’d call or text like a normal, socially adjusted member of society instead of his usual habit of popping up where she least expected him. 

“You shouldn’t be walking alone. Not in this part of the city. Not this late at night.”

She flinched at the voice from the alley beside her just as she flinched at most noises in the dark these days. Rather than let fear petrify her, Karen’s body raced ahead of her addled mind, her reflexes cultivated from her harried time in Hell’s Kitchen. Her hand was already plunged into her purse, her fingertips grazed the cold metal of her .038. Then she recognized that voice over her pounding heart. A rasp soaked in subtle menace, bitter as black coffee but edged with inborn humor. For Karen Page, there was no reason to fear this voice. 

She sighed. Exasperation, relief and perhaps some inscrutable emotion summed up in one winsome noise. Karen withdrew her shaking fingers from her purse. She tucked back a stray blond lock from where it escaped her knit cap. “Is this what you do now? Skulk in the shadows and make personal safety PSA’s to random women as they walk home? The punishing business must be slow.”

He scoffed a laugh and stepped out the alley’s black shroud and onto the sidewalk. The cheap flicker of Josie’s red neon sign painted his features. He looked hardy as ever but leaner than she last saw him, like a police dog turned stray. Every furrow etched deeper, hewn by strife and grief and havoc. A storm cloud of a bruise smudged beneath his left eye. Every hard plane of bronzed flesh gleamed before the fickle neon died, leaving him eclipsed in darkness once again. 

She sensed his crooked smirk on his dim features.

“Skulk? Sounds like one of those fancy words from that college education I never cashed in on.” He tilted his head in that arrogant way when he studied people. “And it don’t look like you were heading home unless you’re living above a dive bar now.” 

She crossed her arms over her chest. _Because it’s cold,_ she told herself and averted his direct gaze. “Wow. A PSA, a language critique, and a pithy comment about how I spent my free time. You’re just a jack-of-all-trades tonight.” She felt his all seeing stare fasten on her profile, observing. “And no. Despite being attacked, shot at, and most recently abducted by a deluded ancient death cult, I still don’t have the money to move out of my unlucky little studio. Please, an apartment above a dive bar looks like a penthouse compared to the war zone left in my place.”

Neon red painted his scowl. “Reporters make less than secretaries, huh?”

Her cheeks burned. _Only because of the cold,_ she told herself. “You read my article.”

His answer came in one of those derisive, gruff laughs that never left the back of his throat. At least his unrelenting gaze slid from her. “I did. Bet you’re using your Pulitzer as a paper weight. Tell me, you packing heat because these shitbags roaming the streets are really heroes beneath all that grime?” 

After the day she’d had, the last thing Karen needed was a man who put his faith in bullets haranguing her about her about her own faith in humanity. She rolled her eyes, turned on her heels to walk away, but stopped. No, Frank Castle was not pulling his petty macho bullshit card on her and succeeding. Karen faced him again. Her heels clicked on damp cement until she stood toe-to-toe with a man most people fled in the exact opposite direction.

“Why do you even care what I write about? You’re dead. Remember? I suppose _dead_ means off moping in some bomb shelter while you polish your guns.”

“Ouch. My cold heart just cracked a little.” He put his hand on his chest and rubbed his sternum. “Okay. Not cracked, but you definitely scuffed it.”

“What do you want, Frank? You told me to stay away, and I have despite the very gruesome trail you tend to leave behind you.” She shuddered thinking of the crime scene photos from Boston. “But it looks like you’d rather be a pain in the ass than dead to me. So spill, or let me resume my so-called harrowing walk to a dive bar to wash the bad taste of this day from my mouth.”

He shoved his hands in his pockets and shrugged, taking considerable interest in his booted feet. “Was in town. Thought we could grab a drink.”

It shouldn’t have shocked her but it did. She glanced at the Josie’s burning red sign across the street like a sanctuary’s beacon. Could she really take Frank Castle into a place that remind her so much of Matt and Foggy. The very prospect reeked of blasphemy.

Before she could answer him, he spoke again.

“Not a proper drink, unless you want to see me lay into some of that mopey bullshit without any guns to polish.” For the first time that evening he dared to hold her direct gaze. “Coffee. Diner. Greasy food. Surly waitress. You know the drill.”

Karen bit her lip and stared across the street again. This day needed some hard liquor, but perhaps good company was worth as much. _Good_ being a subjective word in her company’s case. He was dressed deceptively normal in a thick cargo jacket and dark jeans tucked into scuffed boots. Did the man even own a pair of sneaker? The February breeze kicked up, carrying the crisp scent of winter night and the ghosts of spent gunpowder. Had he killed anyone tonight?

“Fine,” she agreed. “One condition: You can’t shoot or stab anyone in front of me. Think I’ve seen enough of that for a ten lifetimes. You know what. No bloodshed at all. And so help you if your using me as bait—”

“Scout’s honor, ma’am.” He clipped in then started walking away. “C’mon. You going to lay down the rules til daybreak or are we going to eat? I’m starving.”


	2. Irish Creme

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Frank Castle may not be as emotionally dead as he'd like to be.

In all honesty, he hadn’t intended on tracking her down. He’d returned to the city to perform some security checks on his safe-houses and plant a few more caches around town. Weapons, money, phones. Whatever stock Micro hooked him up with. And it was going goddamn swimmingly until he found himself on _her_ side of the island. 

Or should he say Red’s side. But they didn’t bother one another much these days.

Fucking Hell’s Kitchen. They called him crazy but only someone batshit out of their skulls willingly lived in Hell’s Kitchen. The place was such a hotbed for misfortune that it attracted a shadowy Japanese syndicate leagues worse than the Yakuza. But in one of first acts of embracing his moniker, he’d assisted the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen in putting some of the ninja assholes down. Whether it be sentimentalism or vigilance, he returned to their viper’s nest and found nothing but demolished rubble. The entire building was razed, protected by a chain link fence and some rather garish warning signs which kept most curious trespassers at bay. Frank stood on a rooftop and looked down on the cordoned off street below.

_The last time I saw her…_

Staring down from a rooftop like some cheesy action movie, but he saw her and she saw him. He’d heard of lawyers chasing ambulances, but the lawyers’ leggy secretary seemed bound by laws of magnetism to disaster. 

_Probably why she kept so close to you._

Frank shook his head and cursed. He was beginning to sound as batty as that upstart merc in red jammies he’d had a brush with last week. Even as he cleared his senses, some snake of an emotion coiled in his gut. What was it? Longing? Nostalgia? Some specter of lust? Was he just hungry? He’d become colorblind to his own emotional spectrum. Feelings moved through him like ships passing one another in absolute black. He knew they were there, he just couldn’t identify them. 

Those indefinable emotions mutinied, had all but commandeered his legs while his mind warred against what he assumed was his heart. Goddamn sensibility plead the fifth. What was he doing? She’d told him he was dead to her last time they spoke. Not like she’d be happy that he dropped in and tread muddy bootprints on her clean little life.

There once was a Frank Castle who’d make an absolute idiot of himself for a girl like her. A woman who shut a guy down with a look and stomped on his pompous bullshit in her high heels. A woman who didn’t let a guy go to bed angry because she was just as stubborn and hot tempered as he was. She’d scorch any attempt at a stalemate until he saw the light. Then’d she take him to bed and put that anger to better use. 

His thoughts strayed to the no man’s land where he kept the fading memories of his wife. He pushed them away.

Fuck. 

He liked his unfeeling bubble, the cold bullet casing that kept him from exploding.

So why was he searching for Karen Page after midnight in a sleepless city? He’d know if anything bad happened to her. If her co-workers were anything like her law firm job, they’d probably become just as beguiled by her sunny disposition and relentless work ethic. Yet he’d become slightly unnerved when he found her apartment dark and her bed empty. He grew even more rattled when he found her former place of employment stripped to bare walls.

_So much for my legal team._ Not like he’d put them through the media and legal crucible of representing an armed, infamous convict on the lam. Especially when they worked _pro bono_. He felt sorry for the poor mook of a public defender if he ever got caught again. 

Her current job was laughably easy to sneak into. All he needed was a take out bag, a fake name along with a bad hat and the doorman sent him right up to the Bulletin’s main floor. Christ. You’d think after everything that happened New York businesses would upgrade their security from amateur hour. Yet he cast aside grumblings about feeble surveillance when he learned Karen hadn’t been at her desk all day…nor the day before that.

Frank Castle didn’t often allow his wits to boil over but, but he was currently one notch below panic mode.

Shit. There was only one other place he could think to find her before he called Micro put him to task. What was that place called? Jolly’s? Joelie’s? His esteemed legal team had only mentioned the place a goddamn handful times when they assumed he wasn’t listening or simply asleep. 

“If I drink the water at Josie’s, Matt will have to show up for court, right?” the lawyer who seemed to give a damn about his case had half-joked.

“You could. But think about all the free drinks you’d be missing out on during your convalescent leave. Or your inevitable death from dysentery. Don’t do anything rash. Do you really want to be the last person in New York City to die from dysentery, Foggy?” Karen had retorted with some gallows humor and it was all Frank could do to stifle his chuckle while he feigned sleep. 

“What are you talking about? There’s a Josie’s waiting for me after St. Peter issues my ID card. I mean, what version of heaven doesn’t come with a dive bar and an indefinite bar tab?” he said and they both talked more about the place. Apparently their problematic client had drove them to the drink.

_Josie’s._ He walked the entire way there to burn off the restlessness seething in his blood. She’s alright. She’s a damn grown woman with a good taste in firearms…and a curiosity which had gotten her into trouble before. Judging by her articles for the Bulletin—because he’d read them all—she gravitated towards intrigue rather than resigning herself to fluff pieces. What if this was the Blacksmith all over again? Her yanking at a string and unraveling the whole damn thing out from under her feet.

He broke into to a jog.

Six blocks later he caught sight of her. She was bundled in her long winter trench coat, those long legs perched on high heels, too good for the dismal habitat of Hell’s Kitchen. Frank ducked down an alley. Josie’s was a block over and he suspected Karen of having enough sense to keep to the streets and not chance shortcuts. With his gait and her heels, he’d easily intercept her before she arrived at the bar.

_And say what, big shot?_

He’d offered to take her to a diner before he realized what he’d done. _Smooth._ Last time he took her to a diner he’d swabbed the floor in other men’s blood. The Punisher was hardly an ideal dining companion. But the urge to talk to her struck him sideways and he damn well couldn’t risk a bar. He’d drank sparingly since his family’s murder and none of those times had ever ended well. It was ugly. Cracked drywall, busted knuckles, crying the tears he didn’t think his stone cold heart could dredge up anymore.

Yet the situation hadn’t gone completely FUBAR. She agreed with some attached conditions he couldn’t really fault her for.

They walked in silence except for the neat click of her heels and the occasional squeak of his leather boots. He checked his stride down to pace her impractical footwear. 

“Here good?” he asked, nodding to the corner diner called _The Galactic._

The inside was like any other 24-hour diner in New York. The aesthetic decked in a hold over from the sixties, and not the good part of the sixties either. Pure kitsch. Overhead, a blueish light emanated from a plastic night sky replete with dingy stars. Evicted barflies and crashing club kids teetered on barstools or folded over in booths like human detritus. At least he might be able to make good on his promise not shoot anyone. Frank doubted some mobster or trigger happy gang banger would swagger in here for a meeting. But still he accounted for every entrance and exit, every place to dive for cover or probable weapons should he run out of ammo. These observations had become second nature now amplified under the gimlet eye of his combat awareness.

The hostess led them to a back booth and far, far away from the living dead seated at the front. Frank took the booth against the wall. Karen slid into the seat across from him, her skin glowing porcelain against the booth’s dark blue upholstery. The hostess dropped two menus as garish the decor on the table between them.

“What’ll ye have to start, hon?” she spoke to her ticket pad instead of her customers.

“Black coffee and an order of disco fries.”

Karen’s paused in untying her scarf to shoot him an incredulous look. 

“I know. I’ll never keep my girlish figure eating like that.” He patted his toned stomach. “But sometimes I’d like to enjoy a meal that doesn’t come out of a can or requires a splash of water.”

She shook her head, removed her cap, and ordered as she shrugged off her coat. “Coffee with some Irish cream if you have it.”

The waitress jotted down their order and pushed through the kitchen’s swinging doors. 

“Ritzy. Figured you for a soy, half-caf grande or however people order coffee now these days.” 

“You know me. Living high on the hog with my swanky reporter gig and my three cents a word.” She sounded annoyed, a general annoyance with the how her life had been upended, but he was right there to lob her frustration at. And who could blame her? 

“That’s bullshit. You’re good writer. They should pay you more than that.”

She looked from where she stuffed her coat beside her. “Wait. You’ve actually read more than one of my articles?”

“Eh, I do when I’m in town and pick up the Bulletin.” 

That had been a bald faced lie. Who was he kidding? He had Micro e-mail him scans of the articles wherever he was on the road. All because Karen Page stuck to his wounded psyche like a single bandage keeping him together. 

The waitress returned with their coffee and his disco fries since it didn’t take a 5-star Michelin chef to throw gravy and melted cheese over french fries. Food gave them an excuse to defer conversation for a few quiet moments.

He peered up from his appetizer and caught her admiring the star spangled ceiling above them. Her eyes lit with childlike awe. Of course. It was nothing more to him than a gaudy fixture showing its age in sealed cracks and yellowing plastic, but she still found wonder in it. 

“Looking to get away, Irish?”

“Irish?” The cushioned booth squeaked as she leaned back to meet his stare. “No more _ma’am_ or _lady_ when your feeling exceptionally grouchy?”

“Irish. Like your coffee. And I’d like to think we can quit the formalities being we’ve each other’s asses.”

She scoffed and dumped another sugar packet in her cup. “And I saved your troublesome ass…when?”

“Ah, so you ordered humble pie to go with your coffee. C’mon. I’d either be dead or barely living with three hots and cot. Or worse. Packed up in some madhouse drooling all over myself. Don’t think we’re square just yet. I still owe you for not shooting me at your apartment. God knows I would have shot me in that situation.”

“Does that mean you’re buying my meal?” She pretended to browse the open menu. “If that’s the case, then I’ll be ordering the surf and turf. Maybe a lobster tail to take home.”

“Look at you, Miss Three-Cents-A-Word. Knew you were too classy for this joint.”

“No, I like it here. It has a certain…ambiance,” she finally said after pinning down a merciful word.

He tapped his fingers along the warm ceramic of his mug and looked up. “There was this place my dad took me to when I was a kid. Nasa’s Diner. Had a ceiling like this. You’d hardly know it because of the perpetual haze of cigarette and cigar smoke wafting over the entire dining room.”

“Kids these days and their smoke-free restaurants,”she said in a teasing voice. When he dropped his gaze, their eyes met momentarily. She looked away first. “So, other than systematic slaughter and the whole _one man army_ gig, what have you been up to?”

“Been to hell and back. And by hell, I mean New Jersey. My associate lives down there in Patterson.”

“You have an associate now? Because the garden state would freeze over if Frank Castle ever had a friend.” She flashed him a wicked smile that melted something icy inside him.

“Nah. Friends don’t make friends go to Jersey. The guy’s a bit of a shut in. Doesn’t peel his face from the computer screen often unless it’s to discuss business.” He quaffed the hot coffee, reveling in the heat and bitterness that poured down his gullet. “How about you?”

“Tomorrow’s a red letter day.” 

“Why’s that?”

“It’ll be a whole month since someone shot at me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Go put on Taylor Swift's _Wildest Dreams_. Just do it if you want to be plunged into angst!ship hell. It's my current Kastle theme song. It hurts so good.


	3. Snake Skin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It sucks when the people in your head refuse to cooperate or you lose the ability to prose.

She knew the man subsided on something hardier than black coffee and simmering fury. But disco fries? Most people probably thought the Punisher sucked marrow from uncooked bones, or at the very least eschewed foods with ridiculous names.

_But he’s not just the Punisher,_ she reminded herself despite how Punisher-esque Frank looked beneath the blue filtered light. The bruise beneath his eye mottled to black and his strong bone structure jutted starker. Contrary to how dusky the light turned his bronzed skin, it made his teeth unusually white. Oh God, she must look as pale a ghost in this lighting. Karen discreetly studied her arms for any telltale glow but he spoke again.

“A month? That whole ordeal with the Blacksmith was over a month and a half ago. It’s been more than a month since someone’s shot at you.”

“Well, seems I live a charmed life. One that attracts gun fire as if I have a target branded on me somewhere.”

The air charged, thickened with unease like a coastal lull before a nor’easter slammed down. His jaw clamped so tight that she measured the thrum of his rapid pulse in his cheek muscles.

“Who shot at you?” he growled in a timbre sounding of strong whiskey squeezed from shale.

Oh. That was definitely his Punisher voice. Downy hairs on her arms raised in some atavistic reaction to an apex predator’s rumble. The brutal angles of his face drew together in his checked anger. This was the beast lurking behind the facade of corny jokes and cockiness and she’d almost forgotten about it.

“Karen, who shot at you?” This time he spoke softer but gilt in deathly severity. 

Oh shit, he just used her first name. 

She shuddered beneath that unwavering stare and composed herself. “Some guy outside a clean needle exchange site. It’s my fault. I was taking some exterior shots of the building for the article I was writing. He must have thought I was documenting the line outside rather than than an innocuous shot of the sign by the door.” 

He let the silence build, hone itself so sharp that she was bound to cut herself on her own words. _How the hell does anyone keep it together when that look paired with that voice is trained on them?_ The next question remained unasked but she answered it anyway.

“I’m fine. He aimed at the pavement several feet in front of me. No more than a little dinged cement. I ought to have arranged to come on a day they were closed to the public. Rookie mistake. I lived and learned.”

“Hell of a lesson for some fuckin’ scagfiend to point a gun in your direction and pull the trigger.” His voice dragged through his teeth. “Shit, what if the bullet ricocheted? Even warning shots have to land somewhere.”

_You know what? Fuck him. Fuck Matt too for treating me like some swooning damsel incapable of living my life without a bodyguard and safety padding._

“Frank.” She leveled him with a stern, blunt stare ever bit as severe as he mustered. “I. Am. Fine. Don’t embark on a warpath over worst case scenarios which never happened. The police arrested the man right after the incident.” She crossed her arms over her chest and looked down her nose at him. “Plus, it’s not like it’s the first time someone pointed a gun at me and intentionally missed. I’m an old pro at being shot at but never hit.” 

Pure contrition flickered over his face before he concealed it beneath a smug mask. He took a swig of steaming black coffee, his third cup of the evening and freshly poured. The stuff had to be hot enough to melt the gravel from his throat. “So you’re saying that if I go back a month in the NYPD’s aggregated booking records, there’ll be a police report with all this asshole’s info?”

She lodged her best glare between his eyes.

“Do they teach you women to do that? To give a guy hell with a single look? You, my old lady, even the girls in high school could skewer me with that look.”

When it came time to order the entree, Karen had lost her appetite but ordered a light meal anyway. If he was going to spend the time to aggravate her, than he was going to spend more money. Once she looked up from her spanakopita and caught him blatantly staring. Not the inward stare that collected information but one of reflection.

“I’m going to take a wild guess that I have spinach in my teeth.”

He grumbled something and rubbed his jaw.

“The past month’s been rough on you," he finally said.

“How can you be so sure?"

"Because you fell outta love."

She nearly dropped her fork in her lap. Karen hastily chewed what was now certainly the last bite of food for the night and swallowed. She carefully minded the expression on her face. “You don't know that.”

He scoffed through his wry grin and chomped down another fry. “Just so you know, no matter how you think you’re schooling your expressions, I can still read your face like a billboard. Also, you're not the type of girl to go out drinking at bars alone when she has someone waiting for her nice and cozy at home. You haven't touched your phone once. Not to check a text. Or to make a call. Texting's out, yeah? He's blind."

"Goddammit. Can you cut the psychoanalytical bullshit?" She glared up at him. "Don't you dare disappear and then have the gall to hijack my night and claim to know everything that's going on with me and Matt. You lost that privilege when you walked away from me."

"Technically, you walked away from me. I know I trashed your car, but calling a ride with flashing blue lights and doors you can only open from the outside doesn't bode well for me." He reclined against the high booth back. "So what happened?"

“I grabbed it with both hands and was left holding a snake skin.”

He made a uniquely male sound of sympathy, took avid interest in his nearly empty coffee mug, and nodded. Great, she was so pathetic even the Punisher felt pity for her love life.

"He lied to me longer than I suspected about things people shouldn't lie about. Not when they are that close to you. And yeah, he broke me. And before you say that's a good thing, I'd like to point out that it's only a positive if they’re willing to put you back together. So yeah…” She brushed her hair from her face, feeling the fresh wound rip open before it healed. "That's what happened." 

Humor glinted in his obsidian eyes. “At least you didn’t walk in on him watching porn behind your back.”

"You are such an asshole.” She laughed despite the tears standing in her eyes. “Why didn't I just sign that phony testimonial and let you be that inept public defender’s problem?”

“Cause I’m too pretty to go to jail.” He smiled, a devilish, genuine grin that crinkled the corners of his eyes.

Over the next few hours they discussed topics so mundane that it was a welcome palate cleanser from the intrigues and drudgery of the Bulletin’s conference room. Sometimes he mentioned his family in tangent, some stray comment about his kids’s or the rarer comment about his wife. Yet the chat always turned to their respective paths. Karen decided to call them _paths._ She wasn’t in love with writing enough to consider it a career and she struggled to label whatever he did as a profession. Frank helped her by classifying his job as a “freelance editor of criminal redundancies.” Regardless of the subject, they slipped into that companionable solace that two people forged during late nights in kitschy diners. What remained unspoken spoke volumes. He doesn’t speak of the reasons for a taking a trip to Boston, just that he took one. Just as she doesn’t mention how the maligned subjects of her articles—notably a school board member discovered to be a pedophile—seem to end up dead from suspicious circumstances.

It was pushing 4AM and she was pretty sure he’d drained the Galactic’s nightly coffee reserves and what was left their food had gone cold. But time seemed meaningless to him. The man was a perpetual motion machine, clear eyed and alert while the late night began to weigh on her. She gradually slumped over in the booth, fighting her weariness. Without looking at his watch, he flagged down the waitress and paid the bill. Frigid winter air slapped her in the face and froze the exhaustion from her bones.

“Hey. I never ordered my lobster tail to go,” she said as she walked out the door he insisted on holding open for her.

“Why stop at lobster tail when it’s on someone else’s dime? Let’s go to Chinatown right now and I’ll buy you a whole one.” He was only partially joking. 

“Oh God, no. The last—and only time—I ever tried to cook a live lobster I felt so terrible that I set it free.”

Franks stopped dead in his tracks and scrutinized her. “You’re shitting me.”

“No! I convinced myself to be adventurous and branch out in culinary expertise. So I picked a lobster out at the fish market and the vendor stuck the big guy in a brown bag. But how could I cook him after listening to him beat his banded claws on the paper bag the entire walk home? Instead of going home, I went down to the docks and released him into the river.”

Frank gave a single, lethargic blink before laughing so hard she thought he might bust a gut. Really laughing in a way she’d long believed capable of someone who had endured as much tragedy as he had.

“Did you at least give the guy back his right to bear claws?” he asked as his laughter tapered off. “Tell me you removed the rubber bands before liberating him into the dangerous waters of the Hell’s Kitchen docks. Even the city’s nautical residents are likely divided into gangs. He needs all the help he can get.” 

“If I can’t go out with without a gun, I don’t see why I’d be so cruel as to leave him literally defenseless.”

The concept seemed to wither his humor and she mentally smacked herself.

“Neighborhood’s gotten that bad?” 

“Actually…it’s grown safer with bigger, badder boogeymen frightening the usual assailants to tread carefully. Maybe I don’t need the gun per se, but it grants me a little more bravery knowing I have it on me.”

“Irish, I’ve seen you act braver in heels and a pencil skirt than full grown men in combat boots and body armor. But bravery don’t amount to jack if you don’t have the skill to fight or the sense to run or hide.” 

“Which is why I’ve also been taking weekly self-defense lessons.” She flashed him a sweet, sinister grin. “So you better watch out next time you sneak up on me in the dark, mister.”

“Alright, Ms. Badass. Show me your moves.” He gestured for her to trail him down an adjacent alleyway.

"Here?" She tossed a look over her shoulder and assured no one was mulling around. Privacy was extremely rare in a city of 8 million residents and God knows how many tourists, vagrants, drug dealers, and those few skulking vigilantes who patrolled alleyways like this one. Especially when one of those vigilantes is also your ex.

"Yea. C'mon, Irish. 'Fraid you can't take this?" He challenged her in the poorly impersonated bluster of a prize fighter complete with old timey boxer moves. 

"Wow. That's...that's fearsome alright." She ultimately patronized him and set her purse down on the cleanest swatch of asphalt she could see. "Just so you know, you're chasing down any potential purse thief who snatches my easy pickings.” 

"Nah. You'll have'em quaking in there boots." He unzipped his jacket and patted the black fabric over his stomach. “Here. I’ll give you a free hit. Compare how your self-defense workshop fares against Quantico 307.”

She laughed at him, high and light and echoed back at them in the alley way. “Okay, now you’re just making fun of me.” Karen planted her feet, locked her wrist, cocked back her arm and aimed above his navel.

Punching Frank Castle in the stomach was like hitting a slab of meat riveted to a brick wall. 

“Motherfucker!” She swore and shook the pain from her stinging hand as Frank grinned that crooked smile of his. She massaged the ache from her knuckles. “Do you spend all your free time doing crunches or sleep in an ab roller or something?”

“Gotta work off those disco fries somehow.” He shrugged but still looked pretty damn proud of himself. “Comere. Let me show you something.”

He gave her a crash course in a basic defense style called MACH holds. The acronym stood for something long and ridiculous like all military acronyms but the moves were useful. It had nothing to do with your own strength, but utilized an opponents pain, anatomy and momentum against them. After he’d rehearsed the steps a few times, Frank said, “Alright, take another a shot. Try to get me on the ground. Hit wherever you want so long as it’s not the face.”

“Have you ever tried telling anyone else not to hit you in the face?” she quipped. 

Her hand came up as if it had a will of its own. She touched the greenish splotch of a bruise smudged beneath his eye. Delicate muscles covered by warm skin twitched under her fingertips. It seemed impossible to believe that there was a part of him that was fragile.


	4. Run or Hide

The Punisher was too practical to feel lonely. He kept company with bedlam, in the explosion of gunfire, in the silvery rasp of stropped knives, in the gentle hiss of the acetylene torch, in the death rattle of slain men. Everything else reduced to background noise. But when she touched his cheek, when she spoke to him that coy smile touching her lips; the world halted. The awareness of his solitude bled through the cold disconnect of chaos he so rigorously maintained.

Karen Page represented everything he ought to be finished with in his life.

Fingers unmarred by callouses grazed the orbit of his left eye. What about his ugly bruise held her fascination?

“Sizing me up for weaknesses?” His voice came thicker than he liked, stripped of his standard cockiness.

She pursed her lips and patted his cheek. “If I was going to exploit your weaknesses, I’d have just kept you talking.”

“Ouch. I told you put me on the ground, not knock my ego down a few notches.”

When she rushed him, she immediately went for his bicep to apply her newly learned defense technique. Predictable. Frank laughed and shook her hand off. Next she went for a rib shot but he blocked it. After each failed hit, her humor boiled off it to fluster and then to frustration. Finesse fell by the wayside. She was all out pummeling him, or trying to at least.

Afraid she’d hurt herself, he captured her slim wrists in hands, holding them up on either side of her body as she squirmed. "What are you going to do now, Irish?"

He predicted the kick to the groin before she raised her knee. His own raised thigh took the brunt of her dirty trick. Frank smiled and that only seemed to piss her off more. “You're scrappy, I'll give ya that. Yield and I'll let you go."

She lurched forward to push him off balance, but he dug in his heels and and pulled her close, barring any distance in case she attempted to knee his balls again. The bundled curve of her body ground against his torso and she wriggled to break his grasp.

Now, what was next? He wagered she'd headbutt him. The riled woman was nearly as tall in heels as he was in boots so she had the option to do so. But his combat reflexes were strangely silent on his assumption. 

Instead of throwing her head back to strengthen the blow, she surged forward, her chin tipped up and lips parted.

The kiss hit him like an onslaught, staggered him ass over tit better than any of her haphazard jabs. Conscious thought fizzled to static the entire time her lush lips touched his. This kiss was soft but dangerous. A stray spark on in a munitions stockpile.

And God help her if anything caught fire.

Despite her initial move, she broke off first. He'd have dealt with the kiss better if it was just another ploy to get the drop on him. Hell, he’d probably applaud her dedication to trouncing a guy twice her weight. But when she withdrew far enough to gauge his reaction, her bewildered face was mirror to his own.

"Oh my God," she said. "Oh God, I didn’t mean to…holy shit."

Apparently spontaneity dealt in spades because his own hand came up, spanned across her nape. He tugged her in close again by an implacable grip. How long had it been since he touched another person so intimately without the intention to break them? By the fright telegraphed in her large blue eyes, Karen probably wondered the same thing. She clutched fistfulls of his t-shirt, not pushing but holding him as captive as he held her. Holding on for dear life to any scrap of sense left in this world. She tried to dodge his gaze but he held her in place. He needed to look in her eyes, eliminate any possibility what he saw was a fluke, a pathetic delusion he'd been an idiot to indulge in the first place. He would crash them, incinerate them to sift the truth from their ashes.

She came at him again, and this time he met her in the middle. Their teeth clacked together, cut his bottom lip as ferocity mantled caution, demanding as fight or flight. Run or hide. Sweetness of her Irish creme and the metallic tang of his own blood mingled on his tongue. That silken tongue of hers jammed between his lips, conquering his senses in a single decimating salvo. 

Once he started, he couldn't stop. Not with her hands sliding beneath his shirt. The bite of her manicured nails skimmed the notches of his spine, wracked a shiver up his back. She uttered a half-choked noise that set his blood on fire. His hand slid down between her shoulders, settled in the dip above her ass as she molded her body against his. Then his knuckles scraped brick. At some point he’d pressed her to a wall. When the hell did that happen? Time meant nothing when she sucked the thin skin along the column of his neck. Kitten teeth redoubled to a lioness’s fervor and Frank savored the pain.

He must have made some grunt between ecstasy and anguish because she stopped. The luminous, disheveled cascade of blonde hair framed her flushed cheeks. He’d kissed off all her lipstick, but her lips plumped and reddened from his attentions better than any overpriced beauty product. They stood unmoving, merely staring at one another as a demon looks into heaven and an angel peers down into hell. Finally, her fingers brushed her swollen lips and then touched the welling cut on his own mouth. The salt of her skin stung the tiny wound. Good. Let it scar. He wished for some indelible mark of her on his body and soul.

For a moment, Frank Castle dropped the barricade and held himself open…

Only to have the inevitable deluge of his sanity drown him. Fury, lust, regret, dismay, relief, maybe even something he dared label delight. Everything switched on at once. A flashbang of emotional cacophony detonated at his feet. He whirled from her. He had to sort his head out. The woman tore him in two conflicting directions. Dazed, he slid a hand in his currently too snug jeans and adjusted himself. Shit. At least some part of him knew exactly what it wanted. 

He closed his eyes. Craggy asphalt pitched beneath his feet as the earth spun out underneath him. Momentum had wrestled what little control he held, reeled and swallowed him in a tumult of emotions he doubted had survived. 

Somewhere in the shallow grave of his old life, Frank Castle was pounding on his coffin lid.

_You think think you deserve to live again, asshole? Bet you thought you were cute sending me to hunt her down so you could slip the grave._ The Punisher tamped down more dirt on the unconsecrated mound. _Just because people still call me by your name doesn’t mean I’m you anymore._

"What is this?" he asked, not as soft as he planned judging by how she flinched.

She hooked him with her questing stare. “I was hoping you could tell me. That was…wow.” 

He had no idea what this was. All he only knew he’d never felt more alone in his entire life.


	5. You Deserve Better

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally able to coerce my muse into granting me some Kastle prose. Going to try to reply to all the comments tomorrow!

_“Why do you care so much about Frank Castle?”_

Caring about him, for him, had been one of the most exhaustive experiences of her life. She dealt with her bullet-ridden apartment, the second job she lost in a year, her doomed relationship—or whatever it was— with Matt. Yet despite the misfortunate heap life dumped on her, she stood on the docks all night because goddamn Frank Castle decided to spoil an otherwise lovely coffee date by faking his death. Of course, she’d was oblivious to the ‘faked’ part that only hindsight revealed. How long had it taken for her to thaw from that cold night? Sometimes she wondered if ice had embedded in her soul, had grown colder and burrowed deeper with each body dredged from the murky water. Would the next one be Frank? 

_Would my life had been easier if it was?_

Easy in the finality of it. The walking cataclysm of Frank Castle gone for good, his brutal crusade over New York City’s criminal underworld finished as it had begun: spectacularly violent and highly publicized. Sure, it would hurt. _Hurt_ being a pallid little word for the anguish she’d suffer. No denying that. One person left to grieve him and she’d exceed the quota of tears. But it’d be one less person to worry about dying because he was already dead. 

At least he ought to be dead to her.

Funny how you can harden yourself to granite, but all it takes is a smile, a laugh, a nuance as insignificant as the way a person says your name to crumble that self-mortared shell. At first it had nothing to do with attraction. She’d been so infatuated with Matt that her lens focused solely on him. If she’d had a crush on Frank at the point, it was hidden in a blurry fringe of her periphery. Now, the lens had been wiped clean and she saw Frank in all his stark, compelling clarity. Each piece of his past he relented had bolstered her curiosity. A curiosity which led her to catastrophe like a gateway drug. She put her life on the line for him. Had torn apart her friends’ law firm for this man. Well, perhaps Matt was to blame for that particular casualty. But even after Frank’s _death_ , she strove to understand his story regardless of the peril. To show the world he was more than just a good man pushed to merciless means.

What hadn’t physically killed her bit off an irreparable chunk of her soul. Now the closed wound worked open and just like that, things she’d felt for Frank surfaced like an infection. It all surged out. The fury from when he tanked his own trial that she’d busted her ass on. The exasperation over those ugly greenish bruises he wore as though they were merit badges of havoc. Heartache over how he reconciled himself to a metaphorical death these months, exactly like he told her.

Dead until tonight.

She stopped feeling the pain in her palms and wrists after the first few hits. Fury routed any sophistication in her attack and she thrashed blindly against his ironclad defense. Anyone else might attempt to calm her or stop her completely, but Frank needled. He prodded. He goaded her until she cracked with the hammer blow of catharsis. 

Prudence fled her. She didn’t even realize she kissed him until she’d done it. A single tremor convulsed through his fingers and they locked upon her wrists as gentle as iron shackles. His lips were warm, pillow soft, yet motionless. Even his breath stanched deep in his broad chest. She might as well have kissed a statue. Karen broke away, mindful of the gaze peering from beneath his stony brow. 

She mumbled apologies. Words tumbled out without prior thought. In a swift, agile move, his fist curled behind her head to tangle in her hair. Eyes like chunks of polished obsidian scouted, pierced, _hunted_ for the unbidden prey of her intentions. His gaze raked lower. To her parted lips. To the fluttering pulse in the hollow of her throat. Knowing him, he might even smell the fear-laced blood beating just beneath her skin. Fear not for her own safety but for his indifference. What if those blazing eyes extinguished, snuffed with stoicism to their hawkish chill? She wanted him mad, she wanted him crazed, she wanted him to feel anything other than dead. 

She curled her fingers in his shirt, afraid he’d pull away, shutter himself behind the red line. Electric currents of desire thrummed off his hot, hard body and she saw her chance. No chickening out now or fretting about maimed pride. If she didn’t kiss him again, she had a feeling she’d never get another chance too. He answered her lips with his own in clash too exacting to be romantic. Is that blood she tasted? Blood and black coffee. How quintessentially Frank Castle.

He hadn’t shaved in a day or two. Stubble to rival an emery strip rasped her lips, adding a dash of pain to an already ruthless kiss. Karen tugged him impossibly closer, savoring the crush of his raw strength. A strength cultivated by soldier’s survival instead of a gym rat’s vanity. A strength now pliant beneath her palms. Huh. When did she slip her hands beneath his shirt? And is that a knife strapped around his ribs? Her exploratory touch roamed to the small of his back and she found a gun tucked there. The man was like a dangerous party game. _Can you find all the weapons stowed on Frank Castle’s body?_ She’d have laughed if his tongue wasn’t currently gliding into her mouth.

Either a brick wall manifested behind her back or he guided her into it. Senses tangled and rioted. Her lips strayed from his mouth, across the chiseled curve of his jaw and down his neck. Here he tasted like salt and residual gun powder and whatever generic soap he probably bought without a second thought. This time she’ll leave a bruise of her own. She scraped the surprisingly delicate skin with a tentative nibble before taking it between her teeth and sucking. He grunted. An evocative, broken sound that unfurled a skein of liquid heat between her legs. What noises would he make if she bit him in other places? On his chest, his stomach, the tender place where a man’s thigh met his hip. 

Karen pulled away, just for a moment to admire her handiwork. The bruise blossomed in a tarnished blotch on his bronze skin. A tiny cut on his lip glistened wetly in the wan light. She’d not only bruised him, she’d drawn his blood. Rhythms of the late night city around them suffocated in the jackhammer of her heart. 

All it took was a single second of razor sharp clarity to slice the moment to shreds. Ghosts rose in eyes and old afflictions ravaged his composure with thready breath. The fragile moment shattered. Frank wrenched away, giving her his back as though it physically pained him to look at her. His fingers twitched a restless tattoo at his sides before he rubbed his face. 

“What is this?” he growled, his eyes unfocused, looking at her but not seeing her.

And just like that, he’s the man in the orange jumper with a wasteland stare who resigned himself to multiple life sentences, the deflated man without the energy to fight on, the man who planted one foot in the grave because that was the easiest route to take. In the end, Frank always gave up on himself. 

_Not this fucking time._ Not if she had to kick his nicely sculpted ass up and down this alleyway. 

“We shouldn’t have done that,” he said, his voice hollow and rote, the words he ought to say but conflicted his lingering feelings. 

Karen was braver than to fall back on denials. No way either of them could deny the ineffable connection regardless of it stemmed from lust or love or just the simple desire for emotional intimacy. “Why? Because you’d have to admit that some part of you is still human under the vigilante reaper act?”

His glare sharpened. Yeah, he definitely saw her now. “Do you know what happens to people who play with monsters?” 

“Don’t give me that melodramatic bullshit.” She met his stare with one just as hard. “Believe me, I’ve known evil men. You’re not one of them. Not even close to it.” 

_He’s sweet_ she’d told Matt. She shoved the thought away with both hands lest Frank think her voice trembled for him and not her dead brother. 

“Might not be evil, but I certainly ain’t an alter boy by any canon.”

“I told you once, Frank. I can’t judge you. But I sure as shit can be pissed every time you cordon yourself off because you might get close to me.”

A rueful grin skewed his lips. He shook his head and evaded her gaze. “Don’t do this. You’re in for a world of pain for even considering a fucked up guy like me in my fucked up situation. I’m FUBAR, sweetheart. Better just cut your losses and move on.”

“I know you felt that. Don’t even try to claim you felt nothing when I kissed you.”

A low growl quaked up from his chest but he was otherwise mum. His eyes trained anywhere but on her. For all the flack he gave her about her expressive face, at least she could meet his eyes without balking.

She pushed off from where she braced against the wall. “What ever happened to grabbing with both hands and not letting go?”

“Because what if I take you in my hands and wring you out?” His voice was a fraying steel cable. “Wring out every once of patience and forgiveness. I’d break you, Karen, and then cut myself on the shards of what I’ve done.”

“You think I can’t handle it?” Her own laugh sounded unhinged in her ears. “Oh, bud, you can’t begin to imagine some of the shit hands I’ve been dealt. Just because I’m not dressed in black and sporting a permanent scowl doesn’t mean my life’s been all sunshine and rainbows.”

His stare seized her in unwavering intensity. He opened his mouth to talk, but shut up just as quickly. The hard set eyes softened by gloom. “I know you’d try to endure it, and that’s the problem. You’re too goddamn stubborn for your own good. You’d suffer in silence. Take it like a real champ, I bet.” He chuckled tartly and rubbed at the bruise on his neck. Despondency gnarled to humor and she wanted to punch the expression off his handsome face. “You’d see a new set of stitches, the bandages wadded around my cracked ribs, the blood crusted on my face and it’d chip your heart to splinters. But you’d be so goddamn concerned with me that you’d let it kill you. Slowly. It’d eat you from the inside.” 

“So you’re dismissing what we just had over _speculation_?” She waved her hand at her side at the ridiculousness of his argument. “What we just had was real. More visceral than I’ve felt in months, and you’re just going to throw it away. Throw it all away because of an assumption about how I’ll weather the chaotic storm you stir around yourself?”

“No, I’ll divert your course to calmer waters because you waited for me that entire night.” 

The cryptic retort gave her pause. “What are you talking about?”

“After the diner. The night I explicitly warned you to stay the hell away from me, you came to the docks with police in tow. What’s done was done. Looked pretty fucking grim. And yet you waited for me.” His stood stock still except for a the rise and fall of his broad chest. “You stood on those docks, in the freezing cold as divers pulled out bodies, waiting for one of them to be me.”

She squared her shoulders to keep from shrinking beneath his blistering stare. “If you were so concerned with my distress, why didn’t you send me some sort of signal that you were alive? That it had been part of your plan. That maybe, I don’t know, you weren’t burnt to a crisp or sunk to the bottom of the river with another hole in your head?”

His brows hitched as derision glinted in his eyes. “A signal like what? A candy gram? A message in a bottle? Tell me, what signal should I have sent you with an entire precinct worth of cops mustered around you?”

“Oh, great. We’ve cycled around to sarcasm again.” She snapped, “You are such a jackass.”

“No disputin’ that, but my jackassery isn’t the point.” His boots crunched broken glass as he closed the distance between them. “Imagine that dread, that fear, that big unknown hanging in the air every single night. This isn’t my first rodeo with leaving behind a good woman to worry decades off her life over me. At least with Maria I only had to leave a few times a year. Maybe the deployments lasted a couple months, but I only had to leave those few times. The way things are now, I’d be leaving every night, leaving you to worry bout if I’ll see the morning or if I’ll end up a bullet ridden hunk of meat in some utility tunnel, never seen or heard from again.” He met her eyes with the gravest of glances. “I’m not doing that to you. You deserve better.”

You deserve better? Ah, there it is. The center square of breakup bingo. Thrown out so often by men with such conviction as if life was an immutable point incapable of altering. As if some nexus of fate confined choice, confined effort, bound suffering to a person like a train car to a rail.

“Hey, here’s a crazy idea. Ever consider curbing the bloody quest for justice that puts you out on the street every night?”

He scoffed. “It ain’t justice sweetheart. Justice is a misnomer. Yeah, I know some ten cent words too. What I do isn’t justice. It’s math. Subtracting shitheads from the general population before they multiply. Not justice. Vigilance. Because there’s always another Afghanistan, another Iraq, another Pakistan, another Chechnya. But this one’s right on my home turf. There is no _over there_ anymore.”

Frank turned from her, slowly but deliberately as a pummeled boxer stumbles to his corner. He spoke again, his words accompanied by a shallow echo off the brick wall he faced. “It was a fourteen hour space-a flight home from Bahrain. Plane full of jarheads, joes, swabbies, some chair force. All different branches. At the beginning we'd crack jokes or shoot the shit, but gradually there'd be this silence, this weight settling into the recycled air. Most people think fear sounds like the first shot of a fire fight. But real fear is the sound of over a hundred grunts gone deathly silent trying not to dwell on what might await them at home." He looked away from the wall, down the alley to the cars passing beyond. "You had fourteen hours to ditch saddlebags of shit from the front. Fourteen hours to remember what it feels like to be more than just a uniform, a name on a muster list, a set of tags, a protector of freedom, and a harbinger of death. Fourteen hours to shed paranoia about being shot in the back at any moment. Fourteen hours to lose a combat awareness that feels like flaying off a layer of skin.

"There's no more plane ride. No more dicking around at some layover. Hell, it might be the matter of a five block walk." He scrubbed a hand over his face. “This is my new front.”

New York City would crumble to bare girders and overgrown forest before Frank Castle relented his mission. He’d lived in darkness so long that the light burned his eyes. Goddamn him.

“You think you’re some big, bad monster. A waking nightmare with lead for blood and bullets for teeth.” She took a few steps towards him, encroaching on the invisible red line. “But you’re not a monster. You’re just a man who’s worn a wolf skin for too long.” 

He tilted his head down and away, his brows lowered and shrouding his eyes in black pools. “Go home, Karen. Go find some nice, normal guy who gets half a load on and yells at football on weekends. Who binge watches tv shows. Someone with a stressful, safe nine-to-five and better odds of coming home each night.”

They stood quiet, the night pressing down from its narrow canopy above their heads. 

He sniffed and cleared his throat. “Don’t give me something to lose. Not again.” 

What could she say to that? Whatever retort or reasoning became trivial. How could she argue against the three graves that forever lingered in his shadow?

Karen nodded silently. All her bluster and conviction depleted. The corner of her mouth lifted and she almost laughed at her foolishness. She let him do again. She let him disappoint her just like all the other times.

She doesn’t even bother saying ‘goodbye’ or ‘thanks for dinner’. He doesn’t try to stop her as she walked away. Though she walked home by herself, but she knew she wasn’t alone. Out there in the darkness, he followed in shadowed footsteps because he’d rather uphold the bleak illusion of the lone wolf rather than admit he cared for her. Cared enough to ensure she arrived at her apartment safe and sound.

As though she hadn’t tormented herself enough, Karen peered out the plate glass and saw him there across the street. She caught him just in time to watch Frank turn away and disappear into the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welp. That was painful to write. Stay tuned for the epilogue and probably another follow up Kastle story rated Explicit. 
> 
> ********  
> And here's my weird little aside concerning Karen's cryptic backstory. Hear me out. This is all conjecture, but provided the show's reference to Karen's brother's death, my headcanon entails that either Kevin or her father are the villain Death's Head as in the comics. I also think this has a lot to do with how she treats Frank and her tireless pursuit for his redemption. The next story I'm writing touches more on that belief.


	6. I Never Promised You a Rose Garden

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember when I said the epilogue would be lighter? Apparently I lied like my muse lied to me.

Nothing prepared her keenly single self for the outlandish spectacle that was Valentine’s Day. To Karen, Valentine’s Day was just another day scrunched between deadlines. Red hearts festooning shop windows reminded of darker things. Of vigilantes running around in red devil suits and the jumble of bloody crime scene photos from months ago. Some of these windows even incorporated the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen. One lingerie store proclaiming “Leap into Love” and displayed a saucy little red satin number paired with a horned tiara. And if that hadn’t been gauche enough, a sign in the corner of the window invited intrepid customers to come in and browse their “punishing” BDSM merchandise in the back.

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Karen muttered in clouds of cold vapor. She bundled her coat tighter around her body and resumed her walk to work. 

The red decked jubilation seeped in from the streets, transforming the Bulletin from hectic news office to a spectacle of harried delivery men and postal workers. A high tide of women rushed the front desk whenever a brightly garish box or a mammoth teddy bear was left at the front desk. The office buzzed with a chorus of cooing and giddy squealing as everyone showed off their gifts. All things considered in the past months, Karen should be miserable today. First the implosion of her brief affair with Matt, and then whatever the hell that incident had been with Frank. Yet her heart lifted for those co-workers who received gifts from their loved ones. At least someone was having a good day. Why should she be a black raincloud on other people’s happiness because her love life had gone to shit?

She gathered her mail from the inbox and filled her third coffee cup of the day before heading to her office. But when Karen opened the door, what she saw stopped her in her tracks. She furrowed her dainty brows and stepped backwards, checked the name on the door to confirm it was still her own. Yep. _Karen Page_ engraved on the metal placard. So why the hell were there flowers waiting for her? She was accustomed to her desk being stacked with line edits, passive aggressive sticky notes, meeting reminders, and the odd Manila folder supposedly sent her way by some anonymous contact. Even the small, but welcome bottle of hard liquor, but never roses. Especially not an entire white rose bouquet.

_Huh._

She set down her purse and mail to check the tag.

_Karen Page_ was all the tag gave up. No message and no name of sender. 

She tapped the the card between her fingers, her mouth twisted to one side as she pondered the anonymous gift. Who would send her flowers? 

“Alright, this may sound a tad conceited,” she said as she poked her head into Ellison’s office. “But did you send me roses?”

His brow beetled over his glasses. Ellison lifted his gaze from the marked newspaper proofs and cocked his head. “Why would I send you flowers? I mean, it’s a cold, hard truth that I see you more than I see my wife, but you’re here as often as I am even on a slow day.”

“Maybe because it’s Valentine’s day and I’m pathetically alone,” she said with a deprecating little laugh. “Also, I thought it could be a constructive kick in the ass. Like the whisky on Christmas Eve.” 

“Whisky is a gift that clears a writer’s doubt while muddling grammar. Flowers just stink up the place and leave a mess.” His attention had already sunk back down to the proofs he savaged with a red pen. “So, nope. Dead end, Page. The plot thickens.”

Similar inquiries with Foggy proved fruitless. She hadn’t talked to Matt since he revealed his dual identity and subsequently his distrust of her. But she inferred this token of affection didn’t have Matt’s fingerprints on it. Frustrated, she moved the roses aside and continued with her day, trudging through a six hundred word article on an upcoming Red Cross blood drive. Thoughts on how to persuade readers to donate their heart’s blood drowned in the sweetly floral scent that filled the office. Her curiosity inflated by the hour over the small mystery. It was hardly a case worthy of Nancy Drew, but the enigma gnawed at her. Seriously. Who would send her flowers but not have the guts to put a name on it?

It nagged her throughout the day, so much so that she called Petal and Fettle, the florist listed on the card, to investigate.

“I’m sorry, Ms. Page,” the clerk apologized, sounding slightly harried through the din of register clangs and panicked men’s voices. “But it’s our company policy to withhold the sender’s information on anonymous orders.”

“Couldn’t you just break company policy this once?”

“If we do it for you, then we’d do it for everyone.” The woman snipped. “Defeats the purpose of anonymity protection. Now, do you have any issues with your order?”

“Aside from it not being _my_ order, no. Not really. Thanks.” And that ended the call.

She sighed and stared at the pristine bouquet which looked absurdly lush against her drab little office. Her fingers stroked petals soft as angel’s skin. “Just who sent you?”

Karen Page, investigative reporter, stumped by a floral arrangement. 

After some more dithering, she fished her wallet out of her purse and plucked out a business card, it’s edges worn and lightly crumpled. She tapped it on the blotter in front of her before curiosity outvoted her better judgement. She dialed the number on the card.

A woman answered after the second ring. “Jessica Jones, Alias Investigations”

“Hi, Jessica. This is Karen Page from the Bulletin. I’m not sure if you remember me, but you chased some leads for a story I broke last month.”

“Ahhhh, the perv on the school board article. Kinda wished I could take public credit for that one. A bigger bust than the usual cheating spouse or insurance fraud, but clients would get wiggy if they knew I worked with reporters.” Karen heard a chair scrape and the phone resituate itself. “So what is it now? Big time Woodward and Bernstein shit or is your spouse playing grab ass with the wrong person. That’d be a shitty Valentines day revelation.”

“No. Nothing like that. Erm, actually I received flowers…” she glanced at the roses, feeling more foolish with every word.

“Congratulations,” said the pithy private eye on the other end of the line. “And you’re telling me this because?”

“There’s no name. No sender. And I’m racking my brain trying figure out who sent them.”

“Secret admirer, huh? Funny how some men see such tokens as cute and women find it creepy.” More static crackled as she must have switched the phone to a different ear. “What’s the name of the delivery company? Oh, and I’ll do this for a discount since your article nailed that rat bastard, but a girl’s gotta to eat. And buy whiskey. You understand.”

Karen chuckled. Despite only knowing her from a few meetings, she liked Jessica’s brand of sharp banter. “How about I cut out the trip to the liquor store and pay you in whiskey?” 

“An enabler. I like it.”

She provided all the information she could and then both women turned their attentions back to the respective work. Karen was frustration deep in line edits when Jessica’s name lit up on her phone. 

“That florists is more tight lipped than a Russian sleeper agent. Shit. I even pretended to be lawyer asking after a cease and desist order and the woman refused to budge a peep.”

“Dammit.” Karen swiveled in her chair and stared at the botanical enigma. “Anything else you can do?”

“Yeah, I have an idea. But you’ll have to meet me halfway. What time do you get off of work?”

******

Three hours later the two women stood out front the florist shop. Night had already fallen over New York at 6:15, lit solely by orange street lights and the illuminated awnings of bustling restaurants. Petal and Fettle’s cheerful white awning leaned dark over their heads, throwing a shadow down on the entranceway below.

“Shit. I should’ve left work earlier.” Karen jiggled the iron gate drawn over the front door. “We’ll have to come back tomorrow during lunch.”

“Nah, I counted on it being closed.” Jessica peered between the bars and into the darkened interior beyond. Her long dark hair melded with the black leather jacket she wore. “Gone. Bet they couldn’t wait to get of here today.”

Karen narrowed her eyes. “Then why did you ask me to meet you here if you knew they’d be closed?”

“Come on, let’s go check the back door. There must be a loading bay or some other entranceway off the main street,” the detective said without answering her question.

“Other entranceway?” Karen’s heels clicked to keep up with Jessica’s boots. “Why are we looking for another entranceway?” 

A painted metal door scraped by age and delivery carts recessed into the alley wall. Jessica considered their privacy with a look towards the alley mouth before she tried the door knob. 

"Should you—“ Karen didn't get to finish that before she heard the lock's tumblers snap in their casing. The door opened.

"There we go." Jessica peeked inside. “See? They left it unlocked. People ought to be more carful these days.” 

“Should we be doing this?” said the reporter who had more experience in trespassing than she cared to admit too. 

"Well, if that woman hadn't acted like a bag of dicks then we wouldn't have to do this. Stay near. Just because I can't see security cameras doesn't mean there isn't an alarm. Let's make this quick.”

Jessica found a cramped office and whipped out her cellphone flashlight. She sifted through papers and drawers until she located the order ledger propped beneath a keyboard. “Here’s the paper brick road we need to follow.” 

The two scoured the book with the aid of their glaring cellphone lights and found Karen’s name amid the lengthy Valentine’s Day delivery index. Other people’s tidy book keeping be praised, the log provided name, phone number, payment info, intended recipient’s name and the delivery address. 

“Francis Castiglione?” Karen carefully spoke the name aloud to jog her memory. “I don’t know anyone named Francis Castiglione.”

“Gotta be an alias. Which is why you’re here and why I didn’t just break in on my lonesome.”

“Break in? I thought you said the door was unlocked?” 

“Meh.” Jessica shrugged at the feasible crime and tapped Francis Castiglione’s phone number. “Let’s give Mr. Castiglione a ring. The name might be fiction, but you might pin down the voice. Plus, the shop will show up on caller ID. No reason for suspicion on his end.” 

Jessica plucked the corded handset from it's cradle and punched in the number, the beeps grating through the phone’s handsfree speaker. 

It rang for almost five times before something shuffled over the other end.

"Yea." A gruff voice spoke, heavy with drowse. 

Jessica’s tone hitched a shrill octave and thickened in a New York accent no trip across river could dilute. “Hello. This is Tiffany from Petal and Fettle. May I speak to Francis Castiglione?”

The man assented with a grunt.

“We seem to be having trouble processing your order payment. If you can just answer some questions, then I’ll send your order right on over.”

“What do’ya need?” the familiar voice spoke through the speaker. “It should’ve been there this morning. I paid extra to have it at the New York Bulletin on Valentine’s Day morning.”

Oh, shit. Karen knew that voice. 

“Frank?” the name slipped her lips before she had the sense to wrangle it back.

The gravelly male timbre rumbled the word “shit” and the call snipped to dial tone.

"Frank?” Jessica repeated and leveled a delving state at her. She looked at the phone in her hand as if it might burst into flames at any moment. "Oh Jesus Christ, don't tell me that was the Frank I think it was. Francis Castiglione. Frank Castliglione… Frank Castle?”

"I have no idea what your talking about." Karen tucked an already compliant lock if hair behind her ear. "Frank is a common name. Lots of guys named Frank. Could be any of them."

“Yea, word of advice. Don’t bullshit a bullshitter.” The pale skin around Jessica’s eyes tightened. “So is this the Frank you sat beside at his trial for multiple homicides? You know, I thought he sounded familiar. Probably would’ve rung some bells if he got testy and called me _lady._ ” She arched a neat eyebrow at Karen and put her hands on her hips. “So, why is the Punisher of all people sending you flowers? I mean, I suppose it’s sweeter than the hearts of your enemies marinated in a mason jar of their blood.”

“Good question.” Karen was already walking towards the back of the store, not really knowing where she was heading. “Thanks, for your help. What kind of whiskey do you drink?”

“Hold up. You look like we both need a drink. What better way to ignore the love fest neither of us were invited to than by getting drunk?”

Somehow, Karen saw no fault in other woman’s suggestion.

 

****

 

The Irish pub the PI chose to drink was a carbon copy of any other Irish pub Karen had ever set foot in. Tchotchke adorned every square foot wall space, as if more crap tacked on the wood panelling directly correlated to the _Irishness_ of a drinking establishment. More importantly, it was one of the few places in the city not congested with happy couples on dates. The two women sat away from the small clutch of men screaming at a televised Rugby game, the occasional cheer or jeer cleaving their conversation. Karen welcomed the intrusion. Anything to distract from Jessica’s none-so-gentle probing into her love life.

“Okay, I don’t see it,” Jessica said and took a swig of her Johnny Walker, swallowed without savoring the taste. Top shelf or swill, she drank the whiskey with same effort regardless of what the label said. “I mean, yea, if you have a kink for the unhinged, Byronic antihero with PTSD I guess. But the Brontës don’t have shit on Frank Castle’s particular flavor of damage.”

Karen shrugged and tore off another scrap of her beer bottle’s label. “He’s not unhinged and he doesn’t have PTSD. At least he refuses to _believe_ he has it, nonetheless blame his violent streak on it.”

Jessica tipped her tumbler towards her. “Admirable. Let’s tack that on the ticker tape of non-homicidal qualities. Devil may care attitude. Craggy good looks. No lack of passion. Though after the encounter I had with him, I imagine the byplay has much to be desired.”

“You’ve crossed paths with Frank?”

“Shit, that’s the understatement of the century. Sometimes our clients crawl out of the same scummy pool. A low tier mafioso’s wife came to me to get patty cake pictures of her husband. Only way to nail his cheating ass to the wall in the divorce. While I was documenting her husband’s weekly motel room tryst with a substantially younger woman, the Punisher sought to render my services void by rendering my client a widow.” Her eyebrows hitched up as she stared into two fingers of aromatic amber liquid in her glass. “So there’s a bead of wisdom: If your wife knows where you’ve been getting side tail, there’s a good chance the Punisher does too.”

“Oh shit. Did Frank see you?”

“See me? I tackled the high and tight son of a bitch into a wall.” Jessica’s face would look downright dainty if it weren't drawn with the perpetual scowl or wry grin. 

It only took a single conversation with Jessica Jones to disarm any judgement involving the word _delicate_. Yet Karen gaped at the woman who might achieve a 130 pounds soaking wet and dressed in a parka. “You…tackled the Punisher into a wall? Are you sure we’re talking about the same guy?”

The PI shook her head and waved her hand in a dismissal too nonchalant for the improbable subject. “Those Taekwon-Do classes just pay for themselves. But yea, he wasn’t exactly thrilled I came between him and paying forward a few rounds of high velocity slugs. Anyway, he lost his mark, we had a brief tete-a-tete, I called him a psychotic jarhead, he called me a _mouthy broad_ , and we went our separate ways.” 

“But he didn’t hurt you or anyone else other than his target.” Karen reasoned.

“Maybe not on that specific occasion, but it’s only a matter of time. One stray bullet. One case of mistaken identity. Look, maybe you were distracted by the stars in your eyes at his trial, but he murders people. Rather brutally and somewhat unprovoked I might add." She shot her a smirking sidelong glance. "Not exactly Bachelorette contestant material regardless of how many roses he sends you.”

“Trust me, I spent weeks eyes deep in the crime scene photos and case reports. I’m well aware of the barbaric depths of a single man’s crusade.” Karen huffed and shook her head. “But the Punisher does that. Not Frank."

Jessica frowned at her, a sleek lock of her raven hair slid over her cheek. “That's kinda cheap, ya know? To ignore this whole other person because he wears a skull spray painted on his chest. That’s as deluded as pretending the moon doesn't exist when the sun is out.”

“I’m not a psychiatrist. I can’t explain it. Shit, anytime I try to figure out it out myself I only tangle myself up.”

“He’s a psycho killer with a code. A competent serial killer without mommy issues. Seems simple enough to me.”

Karen shook her head and craved something harder than beer. “He’s not like that. In his own way, he’s working to prevent what happened to his family from happening to anyone else.”

“You and people like you flaunt him as some avenging killer angel.” Jessica’s face curdled in distaste. “All people have their minor hang ups. Their prejudices. Tendencies some tight-assed people label sins. But it doesn’t give us the right to go around capping assholes because for the sake of acting like assholes. Not that someone who left behind a charming, bucolic life in small town Vermont might understand,” she said in a tone that would scour the friendliness off anyone less adept at navigating other people’s bullshit. Fortunately, Karen was an old pro at mitigating other people’s abrasive self-defense tactics. 

“Sounds like you’re speaking for these assumed social deviants.” Karen met her scowl without a flinch. “And don’t take the sum of my life by whatever Google spits out. I’m more than just an internet trawl for basics. Plus, I’m not here to argue about the morality of Frank Castle’s vendettas. I just want to know why he sent me flowers after he made it crystal clear he wanted nothing to do with me.”

The other woman’s lips lifted a fraction. “Maybe he occasionally indulges that dying little voice convincing him that he can go back, that he can regain his humanity.” 

“He _is_ human,” Karen insisted, her face hot. “He's not meant to live like a hermit. No one is."

Jessica’s lips pressed together, withholding a scathing retort she typically had at the ready. Something that Karen said had cut her to the quick.

“He keeps his distance because he’s not a complete asshole.” Jessica picked up her glass and swirled it. “Other people’s affection is like a candle. The longer you use it to light your way, the shorter the wick gets. On and on until it’s nothing but a stub Or maybe he’s like me and everything in his life turns into a heaping pile of shit. Why make someone else step in it?” She downed the rest of the whiskey and hailed the waitress for another.

“But why is that his choice to make if someone is willing to help him. _To help you._ To walk at your side and support you when you’d otherwise fall?”

“The last guy I was with had toughest skin out of anyone I ever met.” She snickered at some unsaid joke. “Even he left. Twice. That’s the problem with leaning on people, you’ll fall on your ass in the shit you’ve strewn when your support decides they had enough of walking in it.”

Amid the hissing taps and cheering rugby spectators, Karen’s phone vibrated at her elbow on the table. She flipped it and found an unlisted number blaring bright in the dim barroom. 

“Hang on,” she told her drinking companion. She slid from the booth and had the phone to her ear before she made the door.

“Anyone ever tell you that you’re awfully nosy.” The voice said and she recognized it by the peevishness alone. 

“Yea, by the same folks who consider your signals baffling.” Winter chill whipped at her skirt and she cursed herself for not slipping on her jacket. “Could’ve saved me the trouble and put your name on it, Mr. Castiglonie.”

“Castiglione.”

“Whatever.”

“And I meant it as a friendly, anonymous gesture. Just in case all your boyfriends and other admirers flaked. Not my fault you need to find the end of every goddamn string you pick at.”

“You’re an asshole.”

“Shit, send a girl flowers and get called an asshole. I’ve been outta the game too long.” 

“I’m not pissed about the flowers. What I’m pissed about is when I’m finally settled, you come by and shake everything up again,” she hissed into the phone.

“Wasn’t my intention to shake you up. Just thought you deserved flowers on Valentine’s Day.”

“Why? You tell me to stay away and then send me fucking flowers? What version of reality does that make any sense?”

There was rough exhalation made rougher by static. “No idea. It was late one night, early morning for everyone else, and I found myself parked in front of that stupid flower shop with the stupid cutesy name. I oughta have just stuck to recon on the Italian restaurant across the street but I thought ‘Fuck it. Why not? Not like your workplace is a secret.’” 

“Next time you’re overcome by the urge to send flowers, send them to someone else. Preferably someone you don’t push away when they get too close to invading your bubble.” She was no longer cold. Rage purled in her blood. 

“Guessing white roses aren’t your thing, huh?” She heard him sniff and he dropped any pretense of humor. “Just thought you deserved _something_. Deserved anything I could send under the radar and possibly brighten your day. Your subject matter as of late isn’t exactly fodder for a feel good read.”

“You don’t get to do that, Frank. You don’t get to worry about my life, my happiness, my satisfaction as you hunker down in your own shelter out of striking distance.”

For a mindful heartbeat, she was afraid he’d disconnect the call. The fragile the connection of this conversation genuinely terrified her. Tears stung her eyes. Shit. In one hysteric instant Karen wished he’d hang up and she prayed he’d say something else.

She thought she heard him scratching at his head. “Yea. Alright. Fair enough, I spose.”

Silence slowed the world around her, muted the laughter of couples, the hum of passing engines all muffled and slowed by the gulf of silence ripped between them. 

“Fuck. I shouldn’t have even called you. What the fuck am I doing?” he swore. She heard more scratching or perhaps his hand scrubbing his face. “Night, Karen. Be safe wherever you are.”

The call disconnected with three beeps in her ear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The story continues [HERE](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6500347/chapters/14880073) since the rating gets a hike from Mature to Explicit. Interpret that as you will!


End file.
